blank canvas - Kirsten Sach | landscape designer

100 Your Home & Garden
blank canvas
A once plain, sloping space was ripe for clearly
defined outdoor areas filled with beautiful plants
Text by Carol Bucknell. Photography by Sally Tagg.
finding a garden that was untouched
was a big drawcard for Kerryn Butler
when it came to buying a house.
“I’ve always been an avid gardener,
but haven’t had the opportunity to create
a garden from scratch, to put my stamp on
it,” she says of the Auckland property she
and husband Travis Atkinson bought two
years ago. “For the bloke, [the drawcard]
was the double garage!”
The couple approached landscape
designer Kirsten Sachs about transforming
the bland outdoor area into something
special. For Kirsten, it was the ideal project.
“I love working with character homes and
creating entertaining areas,” she says.
“Having a completely blank canvas as well
a client who is passionate about gardening
was a bonus. Also the fact it had a sloping
aspect meant I could play around with levels
and use them to define the different spaces.”
The once uninspiring kikuyu lawn dotted
with a few shrubs has been replaced by
beautifully organised, multi-level gardens
at both the front and back of the property.
The new outdoor area is divided into
sections to provide a variety of outdoor
spaces for the couple and their expanding
family (son Lachlan, 2, and a new baby
due any day now).
Opposite Kerryn in the beautifully manicured front garden.
Above The small blue flowers of groundcover Isotoma
fluviatilis. Right The front garden stops passers-by in their
tracks – people often linger to admire it. Below The pavers
and plants create geometric patterns.
OUTDOORS

Above The fine gravel covering the steps leading to the vege
plot has become a “psuedo sandpit” for Lachlan. Top right
Dietes grandiflora. Below Sweet peas flourish in the potager.
Left The raised beds are retained by railway sleepers.
One of Kerryn’s favourite aspects of the
garden is its layout. It’s divided into four
distinct spaces: the front garden, outdoor
entertaining area, barbecue patio and
vegetable potager.
“I thought I could have a stab at the
garden myself but I wanted the design
aesthetic Kirsten would bring,” says
Kerryn. She discovered Kirsten through her
brother Geoff, a builder who had worked
on Kirsten’s award-winning rain garden at
the Ellerslie Flower Show. (Geoff also built
Kerryn and Travis’ garden.)
Kerryn checked out Kirsten’s work on
her website and was impressed. “All her
gardens had exactly the kind of planting
that I like – lush, green and subtropical.”
Kerryn also wanted some pretty touches,
so Kirsten created a feature of Dietes
grandiflora in the planting ditch around the
terrace. “I love the mass of white flowers in
summer,” says Kerryn.
In spring and summer the front garden
catches the attention of passers-by with
the petite blue flowers of the groundcover
Isotoma fluviatilis, strappy mondo grass
surrounding large rectangle paving slabs,
and the huge, shiny leaves of tractor
seat ligularia (Ligularia reniformis). More
textural contrast is provided by the tiny
leaves of corokia and buxus in the form
of hedges and clipped topiary balls.
“We didn’t want the usual hedge on
hedge with a picket fence, we wanted
something more exciting. People are
always stopping to look,” says Kerryn.
Dietes grandiflora
flowers rise up
out of the planting
ditch, softening the
interface between
the timber deck and
concrete terrace.
“I thought I could have a stab at the
garden myself, but I wanted the design
aesthetic Kirsten would bring”
Your Home & Garden 103
OUTDOORS

104 Your Home & Garden
Above Lush, mainly green
subtropical planting
around the edges of the
lawn screens out the
neighbours. Left Tractor
seat ligularia is a standout
plant in both the front
and back gardens. Below
right Because Kerryn
is such an enthusiastic
gardener, Kirsten was
free to use a large number
of different plants, safe
in the knowledge that
Kerryn would be able to
maintain them. Below
left Kerryn and Lachlan
enjoy a snack at the
outdoor table.
“We didn’t want the usual
hedge on hedge with a
picket fence, we wanted
something more exciting”
Kirsten enjoys the challenge of creating
defined areas with their own distinct
functions, such as the vegetable garden,
lawn and entertaining area. “I love being
able to work these spaces into my overall
design,” she says.
In the back garden the two existing
decks weren’t large enough for outdoor
entertaining, so Kirsten designed a paved
terrace that’s level with the lawn and
linked it to the lower deck off the dining
room with a timber ‘bridge’.
Because Kerryn wanted a mainly green
garden, Kirsten planted palms, taros and
other foliage plants, with purple and red
accents supplied by the native groundcover
acaena and heucheras. Hibiscus and canna
flowers provide flashes of pink and red.
Despite having never grown them
before, Kerryn was determined to have
vegetables in her garden. The raised beds
are made from jarrah railway sleepers and
there’s a fine gravel surrounding the base,
so the potager area doubles as a “pseudo
sandpit” in which Lachlan loves to play.
The family spends most of its time in
the entertaining area. “We basically live
out there. We bought a cantilevered
umbrella and it gives us plenty of shade.
You can open the dining room doors on
both sides so that it becomes one large
entertaining space,” says Kerryn.
The outdoor living area looks across
the large lawn to wide borders of
subtropical plants along the boundaries,
which help to screen out the neighbours.
“I was able to use a dense palette of plants
because Kerryn is such a good gardener,”
says Kirsten. “I felt confident they would
perform well with her looking after them.”
Having said that, the garden is pretty low
maintenance, she says. “Once the planting
thickens up, it only needs to be chopped
back and tidied up at the end of winter.”
Both client and designer love the
different levels of the garden that separate
the various spaces without using screens
or planting. “It’s also rewarding that this
garden is so well cared for,” adds Kirsten.